Steve Ballmer said at an economic forum in Sydney today that any new Yahoo deal was totally of the cards, despite Yahoo's share price being less than half Microsoft's initial offer. At same time, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said that "I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo."Google pulled out of its deal with Yahoo! earlier this week.

Um, psychiatry isn't necessary. In the United States, AOL has long been regarded as incompetent and unworthy of serious discussion in conversation (if anything, they're the butt of many derisive jokes and puns, the kind that you'd probably give of your best friend's old has-been uncle).

AIM, on the other hand, has had a lion's share of users (mostly in North America) for the longest time, compared to YM (Africa, Asia) and MSN/WLM (Europe, Latin America). One wonders why people are willing to stick with older versions of the AIM client just to use the network rather than switch to a network that isn't a sinking ship...